Wanderers
by jonathonwolfe
Summary: The war was over, the battle had been won, but where did that leave Naruto and the rest of his classmates? What future still awaited them? More alternate universe than not, I suppose. Rated T for some mild cursing.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I don't own any characters presented herein, nor any story. In case you're curious, Mr. Masashi Kishimoto is the manga creator and illustrator.

**Chapter One - Bleed a Little**

In prison, Sasuke had a lot of time on his hands and not a whole lot to do. He lay on a small, metal cot pressed against the far wall of his cell, back turned casually toward the bars, and stared blankly at the sweating stone wall in front of his face. The Leaf village had only prison for its ninja population, which spoke volumes about the integrity of the men and women who put their lives on the line for the sake of this town and its reputation.

To the dark-haired young man - just turned eighteen and barely older than a teenager - the future felt like a fork in a road, and neither direction looked appealing. On one hand he could leave; he had his means for contacting Karin and she, along with the rest of his team, would pay this place an unwelcome visit. He could imagine the resulting destruction, and it brought a smirk to his chapped lips, but then again, the village around him was used to this kind of localized mayhem. Every person brave or stupid enough to live in a village that trained ninja had to be.

Down the other road of that same fork lay a precarious future within the walls of the village itself. From the numerous interrogations, the traitor had gathered that his sentencing had long since passed and he would soon face house arrest, probation, and eventually a return to active duty. He might have a job, the quiet man reflected, but he would never again be truly welcome within these walls. The village had suffered far too much at the hands of his family, his brother, and also by his own will. There would the same glances that Naruto once received for being the carrier of a demon - someone had to be a scapegoat, whether that person liked it or not.

Regardless of the choice, the past was done and over with. No one could bring back those idyllic adventures - and misadventures - with Team Seven, nor the rambunctious fervor of the academy. The rest of his classmates had long since grown up and all of them had faced unspeakable horrors in the years that followed. Whatever the future might bring, Sasuke knew, it would not resemble the 'good old days.'

Even as he lay there thinking and idly listening to water dripping somewhere within these walls, he heard footsteps and then the now-familiar metal clang as his cell door opened. A nervous guard whispered something that might have been "we're here" before leaving in the same direction from which he'd come.

Sasuke didn't need to turn around to know who was standing in his cell. He didn't need to see the bright-orange jump suit, nor the pale hair, nor the intense blue eyes to recognize Naruto. The feel of his chakra was more than enough.

"Go away," Sasuke said quietly, somewhat surprised at just how hoarse his voice sounded.

"Shut up. I wanted to come and talk to you."

"We have nothing to discuss. Idiot."

Unbidden and without permission Naruto took those few short steps and sat down on the cot next to his once-upon-a-time friend. "Of course we do. We're friends, aren't we?"

"Are we?" challenged the dark-haired man as he turned over onto his back and stared at the ceiling. "Don't grasp at straws. The past's not coming back."

"I know that, all right?" Naruto sounded tired, weary somehow. "I know we can't be kids again, and the world's not a safe place. Hands stained with blood and all that follows."

"Then why are you here?"

"I… You…"

The dark-haired ninja shook his head and chuckled. "One complete sentence, moron."

"I want to know where you stand and if there's still a future for either of us."

"Not a conversation I feel like having."

"Fuck you, Sasuke."

"What do you want me to say? Yes, Naruto, here let me bleed for you a little. Maybe you'd like to root around in my head and then judge me to your heart's content?"

"That's not what I meant."

"That's what you asked."

Naruto paused for a moment and ran a hand through his messy, blond hair. "I'm sorry. I just, I miss you. I miss having a friend who understands."

"I would follow you to the ends of the earth," replied his solemn companion softly, "and I want to honor my brother's wishes, but I doubt this place will ever feel like home again."

Naruto was stunned by the sheer depth of pain in those words, the agony of knowing what the future held. He felt instantly bad for asking and yet also grateful that he was allowed to ask, that there was an answer. For almost a minute, the blue-eyed ninja remained utterly silent, listening to Sasuke breathe.

"Happy?"

"I'm so sorry."

"Good for you."

"No, I mean it. I am sorry. You're here, almost within my grasp, and so I keep pushing for a future I know exists. Except, the people I'm pushing against are you and Sakura and the rest of our classmates. It's like the world's gotten smaller."

"We can be friends, if that's what you want."

"Friends, sure, but then what?"

Sasuke chuckled at the sentiment. "I don't think anyone knows that."

"Well, I hate that!" Naruto exclaimed, and then tried to elaborate, not so easy for a teenager who's never been great at expressing his feeling. "I loathe this not-knowing. When I was looking for you, the goal was crystal clear. Find Sasuke and bring him back, end of story. Then the war started and priorities shifted; we had to win or lose this continent. But now that there's mostly peace, we're back to rescuing cats and escorting political dissidents."

"That's what ninja are for."

"Yeah, and?"

"Don't tell me you're bored."

"So what if I am? Mind you, I don't want you to run off again, or better yet, start another great war, but now that we're all here, I feel out of place."

"We are the unfortunate products of our generation."

"Shikamaru said that, too." Naruto frowned for a moment.

"He's too smart for his own good."

"I think he's also bored out of his wits."

"I expect that he feels exactly like you do. He's led armies and fought against forces unthinkable. I can't imagine that mounds of paperwork compare to that."

"And we circle back to the question: what happens now?"

"Peace happens, Naruto. People get to live for a little while and smile a little longer."

"And us?"

"I think we're all grown up enough to make our own way in life."

"That doesn't help."

"I'm not a fortune teller."

"Which is why I didn't ask you to predict the future. I want to know what you want. What you're going to do."

Again with the bleeding, Sasuke reflected darkly as his eyes focused on his pale-haired companion. "Like you, I'm restless. I can't imagine settling down in the village and starting a family. A house with a white picket fence may as well be a prison."

"Yeah…" Naruto's already quiet voice trailed off into silence.

"Problem is, there might not be anything better outside of the village walls."

"But it can't be any worse, can it?" Naruto's lips were a thin line and he balled his hands into fists. "It drives me half mad knowing that I want to be an elder and yet can't stand being here day after day. It's the definition of hypocrisy."

A familiar voice from outside the cell said quietly and without much inflection, "How troublesome."

"What're you doing here?" Naruto exclaimed.

"Bailing you two out. Up and at them." Shikamaru opened the cell door with a key.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean get up, take Sasuke, and follow me."

Naruto and Sasuke exchanged puzzled glances before the two teenagers stood up. The dark-haired prisoner briefly stumbled on his own two feet, reminded with familiar pain exactly how the Leaf village interrogated its inmates. They walked out of the dimly-lit cell into slightly better illuminated hallway. Like within the cells, the walls here were carved directly into stone, forming an underground cellar where village elders left people to rot.

"Why are we doing this?" Sasuke asked cautiously.

"I can only stand so much of Naruto's whining, and he's whining."

"Am not."

"This is high treason," the prisoner warned them.

"Your pervert teacher approved it," Shikamaru said by way of explanation.

Naruto had trouble believing his own ears. Sasuke could practically see gears turning in his head. After a few moments of silence, the blond-haired man asked, "How is Kakashi involved exactly?"

"He gave me the keys and said you were here," explained the lazy tactician.

"I still don't get it."

Pain and frustration seeped into his voice when Shikamaru said, "Naruto, you've gotten it for a long time now. You've just been banging your head against the wrong walls."

"Moron," Sasuke muttered under his breath, but then elaborated, "you're not the only person who's has trouble settling in."

"So?"

"Think about it. When soldiers get used to conflict, peace can in fact drive them insane. We learned that at the academy. There are maybe a few dozen ninja currently here in the village who are living, walking powder kegs. You and Shikamaru included."

"I wasn't planning on doing anything stupid," Naruto grumbled.

"No one's accusing you."

"But it can happen?"

"Yep," Shikamaru put in as he opened another door at the far end of the hall. "It has happened before."

"Oh."

The tactician looked at both of them for a moment. "Exit through this door and down the hall to the left. Find a place to hide for the day. We'll meet at the old training ground by the cemetery at midnight. Prepare yourselves as if you don't plan on coming back." The man nodded to himself. "See you both there."

Naruto puzzled over this statement as they walked down the appropriate hall, one that looked exactly like any others in this cursed maze of a building. "I have no idea what's going on."

"There's a word for people like us. We're wanderers."

Naruto nodded his agreement. "I know. I think I even know who'll be there tonight. Does that mean we're broken somehow?"

"It means we're not... ready... to sit still."

"Will we ever be?"

"Maybe someday. The village doesn't need you right now. It's peaceful, there's no one to fight and plenty of ninja around should something to change. Think of it training. If we live to tell about it."

Naruto smiled. "Now that I can get behind."

"Come on, you've got some packing to do."

Naruto looked at his friend thoughtfully. "And you'll need some new clothes. And ramen. We'll have to get ramen."


	2. Chapter 2

I am not sure I like this chapter much at all. I tried to wander around Sakura's head but she doesn't seem to really have much chemistry with anyone else, so it feels largely reflective. Bah. I think I'll redo this chapter later as someone else.

**Chapter Two**

Escaping from prison is one thing; creating a future, something else entirely.

Sakura wrangled with the butterflies in her stomach as she opened her bedroom window and snuck outside into the cool, night air. Above her, a full moon shone proudly in a cloudless sky and millions of stars twinkled overhead. Quiet as a shadow, she made her way along familiar roof tops, avoiding broken shingles and worn-out gutters through sheer muscle memory as she headed for one of the many training grounds that lay along the village's perimeter.

An owl hooted somewhere among the trees and birds scattered with the sounds of flapping wings as she walked through the cemetery. In the distance, the moon outlined a silhouette of the memorial for fallen ninja. It broke her heart to know just how many names this war had added to the monument, how many more families it had so brutally destroyed.

Just beyond the cemetery's borders, she walked into a partially enclosed area, surrounded where it wasn't open by wire fence. Once upon a time, Academy students practiced within this area and others like, learning to hone their skills and focus their chakra. Sakura suspected even as she saw her own classmates that they would never again spar within these walls.

Shikamaru had apparently come prepared, Sakura surmised when she saw the maps laid out neatly on a makeshift table in the corner. She took off her backpack and set it gently by the entrance before stepping into the dim light of the overhead lamp that hung above the table. Among the gathered, she saw Naruto and Sasuke, along with Choji and Shino. Kiba arrived with his wolf-companion Akamaru, followed by Neji and Hinata.

Ino came over and said, "Hey! I wasn't sure you were coming."

"For a few days there, I wasn't so sure myself," Sakura said earnestly. "I thought this would feel a little like leaving home for the first time, but it's something else entirely."

"Yeah," Ino agreed softly. "It was hard to say good bye without saying good bye."

The two women walked into the light and looked down as Shikamaru traced his long, narrow fingers across one of the hand-drawn borders. The maps were filled with beautiful drawings and intricately written detailed inscriptions of the various places within the lands of the known nations. To Sakura, it looked like one large landmass, surrounded by small islands not far from the ocean shore.

"Is this the whole world?" Naruto asked, peering at the map uncertainly.

"I don't think so," the dark-haired tactician explained, "and it's possible that the Sand has maps that extend past the edges of their borders, but this is the best we've got."

Gaara of the Sand shrugged. Sakura hadn't even realized the red haired elder was there until he took off his hood and walked into the light. He stood tall and proud, and still so very young. He was barely older than the rest of the boys gathered on the training ground in the middle of the night and already the leader of the Village Hidden by Sand.

"If we have them, I couldn't find any without rousing suspicion." He drew a finger across the map. "There's a mountain range here, that's all I know for sure."

Sakura read some of the marking and realized that the Fire Nation was one of the largest countries on the known continent, situated along the ocean on one side and surrounded by other nations on all the rest. With the Leaf village almost squarely in the middle, it made for a formidable defense, although Sakura knew enough about the intricacies of politics to understand that the nation had a precarious place among its fellows.

Shikamaru went over the different regions and nations, but Naruto, who'd been puzzling out the maps pulled back and leaned casually against the fence. He felt that now familiar sense of restlessness, the need to be moving again, to have something to do, some goal to strive for. Sasuke came over to stand beside him, showing no interest in the proceedings.

"Not participating?" the dark-haired ninja asked quietly.

"Shikamaru knows what he's doing," replied the blonde man with a shrug. "I don't."

"You're right about that," Sasuke said with a smirk. "Excited?"

His blond companion didn't take the bait. "Relieved," Naruto answered with a grin that reached his wide, blue eyes. "And yeah, ready to do this thing."

Sakura looked over at the two boys and walked away from the light table to join them. "I wonder if they'll add our names to those little black books of theirs," she mused.

"Most likely," Sasuke acknowledged, hands in his pockets. "I'm extremely surprised that the council missed this."

"They're probably too busy worry about a bunch of teens," protested the pink-haired medic, but Naruto read uncertainty and frustration in those warm, green eyes. "They probably figure we're too tired of the fighting to do something so monumentally stupid."

The ex-prisoner gestured at the teens gathered around them. "Half the people here are top-ranking ninja. This isn't something that should have flown under their radar, and you know it. But here we are, and not a single black ops member in sight."

"You're perhaps right," Sakura agreed solemnly.

Gaara looked up from the maps and said, "I think it's exactly because they trust you."

"Trust alone shouldn't have blinded them."

"They have been wanting and hoping for this peace for generations," Shikamaru pointed out. "Now that it's finally here, the ninja have lowered their guard."

"That's unfortunate," Choji said between potato chips.

"Maybe that's the way it should be," Naruto mused. "The villagers just want to live in this moment a little longer, right? I'm with them. I would prefer it if no one ever had to watch a friend or family member die ever again." Sakura watched gears turning in the demon-host's head. "Maybe, we can take on that mission for them."

"What do you mean?" Sakura asked.

Naruto grinned his customary I-have-a-daredevil-plan smile and then took a deep breath. He looked about the gathered ninja and said, "We can't sit still right? That's why we're here because living our normal lives is boring, because it drives us a little mad inside." He looked around at nodding heads and half-formed smiles. "But maybe we can use that restlessness to do some good in this world, to make this a lasting and permanent peace. We can stamp out trouble before it reaches their borders. And we all know trouble is coming, if not today then tomorrow."

"How troublesome," Shikamaru said and then lit a cigarette.

"Could we really do that?" Kiba looked downright skeptical. "Keep in mind, we're not all super strong like you, Naruto."

"We don't have to be," Gaara replied thoughtfully. "We might have be patient and cunning and ruthless, but most of the monsters in this world, at least, should be no more powerful than an average ninja."

"I like it," Naruto announced. "We can take on this mission for ourselves, and we can do it, together."

Sakura watched as the gathered crowd, Gaara included, nodded and voiced agreements to this suggestion. The Leaf village had come along away during these trying years, from fearing the carrier of a tailed beast to listening to the young man speak, to following his orders. She knew that nothing could ever erase the prejudices the haunted his every step, but Naruto had moved forward in a way that very few others had mastered.

"If we do this thing, we're going to need a base of operation," Gaara said with a tone of finality. "Somewhere centrally located but quiet enough to keep a low profile. We wouldn't want to be rudely interrupted."

"We should also foster an identity and gain notoriety," Shikamaru pondered, looking months and years ahead into the future, planning moves ahead as though in a game of chess. "And we'll need black market connections - for supplies and information."

"How about a new home closer to the water, somewhere near a port city?" Sasuke offered.

"I like that idea. With the ocean close by, we'd have another means of transportation," Shino said from beneath his hood. "A low profile will help, too, at least to start out."

Neji raised an eyebrow and said, "It's hard to believe we're even discussing this, much less agreeing to participate."

Shikamaru nodded rather sadly. "What we're proposing amounts to nothing less than high treason. Should we leave these walls, we will be counted among the ranks of the missing ninja and hunted down. If that's not your cup of tea, leave now."

"You're not one to talk, Neji," Ino pointed out, her long hair falling loosely across thin shoulders. "If you stay, you can look forward to years of torture by Hinata's father. For both of you."

"It's not like that," protested the pale-eyed young woman, fingers clutching at the hem of her kimono.

"It is exactly like that," Neji confirmed. "I'm not blind to what your father does. When was the last time he let you practice with a knife?"

The dark-haired woman hung her head and stared at the dirt beneath her feet. "Father is… old-fashioned."

"That's why we're here, right?" Naruto asked reassuringly, "because this isn't working, right? Because we aren't the kids we used to be and status quo is driving us crazy."

Sasuke found himself agreeing and also surprised at just how far Naruto had come. From a hated child into an adult about to start a revolution for the sake of people who called him a friend. In some ways, Sasuke was almost proud of the blond-haired idiot.

"All right," Shikamaru said calmly, "troublesome as this might be, we have a plan. We should head south of here and toward the ocean. We find the coast and go from there. Everyone clear?"

"What about other people?" Sakura inquired as she picked up her backpack.

"Other people?" Naruto looked puzzled.

"If we feel like this, here in a village that loves us and cares for its ninja, then how many others, in the other villages, feel the same way? Not everyone got to go back to a happy ending."

Naruto nodded. "Once we have a base, we have to find them. Anyone who can't fit into this peace. And we offer them a place with us."

"Are you nuts? Some of them are enemies!" Kiba protested.

"Not anymore. As soon as we take off these headbands, our allegiance will lie only with each other. Right about then, anyone who needs a place to be is a friend."

"Shit." Kiba looked stunned for a moment. "You're right, though. That sucks. I don't want us to be the cause of the next war."

"If we're smart about it, we can avoid that fate," Shikamaru said, "but only if we're smart."

"Well you're the smartest guy I know," Naruto said and smiled.

"Your flattery will get you nowhere," Shikamaru grumbled.

Naruto laughed. "We need a new name," he said as he took off his forehead protector, a headband he'd fought for so long ago.

Sasuke looked at the people standing so casually around them and said, "We can be the Guardian Clan."

"Guardians? I like it," Sakura said, testing the idea in her head. "It fits what we want to do."

Hinata nodded and Neji said quietly, "It does fit. It's also a reminder of why we're doing this. I don't want anyone to ever fear what we do, unless they strike the first blow."

The gathered young men and women all removed their own headbands, except Gaara who still had to be the elder of a village at the end of the day. They also exchange their standard Leaf uniform for more comfortable and nondescript clothing. Without their uniforms, Sakura thought, they looked more like a gang than ninja. A very bland sort of gang. Just then Tenten jumped down from a tree and into the middle of the training ground.

"The patrols along this wall are lax this evening," she let the group know.

When they picked up their packs and leaped clear across the wall into the forest beyond, only Kakashi was watching, and he smiled beneath his mask. _Not children anymore_, he reflected solemnly as he made his way back to the elder's office.

The old woman sat behind a mahogany desk at the top of the Leaf Tower, in an office overflowing with paperwork. She was holding a mug of something strong and foul-smelling but her eyes softened when the white-haired ninja entered the room. She was pretty sure she knew what was coming next.

"They've left," Kakashi acknowledged as he sat down in a chair across from her.

"I suspect they might," the woman said with a slow sigh. "I wonder how long it'll take the council to catch on."

"A few days, perhaps. Longer if the kids get lucky."

Tsunade laughed harshly. "The fools won't appreciate it."

"It takes a very special kind of person to appreciate the birth of a new village."

Tsunade nodded her agreement and gulped down her drink. "Tomorrow, gather a small team and tail them. If anyone questions you, it's an escort mission."

"But of course. I was planning on it anyway."

"Good." The old woman shook her head. "I still remember when they were children. What handfuls."

"I am vastly more curious about their children. What will it be like to grow up with those kids for parents?"

"Probably no worse than anything we could ever do."

"Perhaps you're right," Kakashi agreed as he pulled out one of his favorite books. "In fact, I pray very much that you are."

"Between them, the kids have several competent tacticians, a slew of eye-technique users, and some very powerful ninja, not to mention a medic. So stop worrying about them, they'll be just fine."


End file.
